Friday, June 12, 2015

The State of Michigan: Another Republican Failure

There’s an excellent Salon article today exposing the failed
policies and resulting human devastation of yet another Republican governor,
Michigan’s Rick Snyder. Despite the reality that his state is in an economic
free-fall, Snyder is touring the country trying to turn a sow’s ear into a silk
purse with highly selective and dubious claims about his austerity program.
Like Brownback in Kansas, Walker in Wisconsin and Scott in Florida, Snyder is
using slight of hand and verbal obfuscation to confuse the rest of the country
about what is actually going on in his state.

Like his fellow Republican governors, Snyder has cut taxes
for the wealthy, drained money from public education and social services,
attacked unions, ignored or repealed corporate safety and environmental
regulations, and disenfranchised minority residents even more than they already
were. Snyder, however, has upped the anti by instituting “emergency management
legislation” that allows him to send in self-appointed “managers” to take over the
running of school districts and, in some cases, entire cities.

Despite the fact that the austerity policies of all these
Tea Party Republican governors have proven to be dismal failures and caused
significant hardship for the citizens of their states, the corporate media is
paying scant attention to this disaster in the making. The reason why is quite
simple. The oligarchy running this country loves what Snyder and his colleagues
are doing. The human toll is of no importance to them, as long as the corporate
monster is being fed and obeyed. Snyder, Brownback, Walker and Scott are the
best friends a CEO ever had, and the worst governors the people have ever had
to endure.